The security of computing resources and associated data is of high importance in many contexts. As an example, organizations often utilize networks of computing devices to provide a robust set of services to their users. Networks often span multiple geographic boundaries and often connect with other networks. An organization, for example, may support its operations using both internal networks of computing resources and computing resources managed by others. Computers of the organization, for instance, may communicate with computers of other organizations to access and/or provide data while using services of another organization. In many instances, organizations configure and operate remote networks using hardware managed by other organizations, thereby reducing infrastructure costs and achieving other advantages. With such configurations of computing resources, ensuring that access to the resources and the data they hold is secure can be challenging, especially as the size and complexity of such configurations grow.
In this type of distributed computing resource environment, a variety of operations such as serialization, may expose sensitive information to risks during storage and transmission over networks. Customers of the service provider may execute computer system instances on hardware of the service provider and these instances may contain sensitive information. Serialization of instances may jeopardize the sensitive information contained in the instance, by causing the information to be stored persistently. These types of risks can create difficulties in managing secret information of a customer that is contained in instances.